


Beat Again

by TeaCub90



Series: King of The Castle [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Angst, Aziraphale's Bookshop (Good Omens), Botany, Character of Faith, Crowley Has Chronic Pain (Good Omens), Cuddling & Snuggling, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mentioned Gabriel (Good Omens), Neighbours, Obsessive-Compulsive Behaviour, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, anxiety attack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-12
Updated: 2020-03-12
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:48:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23120512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeaCub90/pseuds/TeaCub90
Summary: ‘Aziraphale,’ Crowley leans against the counter, rubs his forehead, feeling very tired just witnessing all of this from the side; silences his friend immediately. ‘Do you need me to come over?’There’s a very telling silence, broken only by the rattle of the other man’s breathing.(Or: two neighbours keep each other and their respective conditions company in the dead of night).
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: King of The Castle [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1676554
Comments: 40
Kudos: 276





	Beat Again

**Author's Note:**

> Right, okay.
> 
> I've been wanting to write a Good Omens Human AU for ages (I find I have more confidence writing those than fics which are strictly canon) and although I'm working on something longer, this popped up first. This is a story about obsessive-compulsive-disorder and a chronic pain disorder, written by an obsessive-compulsive with friends who have chronic pain conditions. I have asked for their advice, and for more medical know-how, and have done a fair bit of online research, but I am honestly no expert and can only hope to do it justice. If I get anything wrong, I would much rather be told so I can correct it. 
> 
> I am however, well-versed in OCD, having been diagnosed with the disorder on a religious scale when I was 17 and it's caused me a lot of grief. I found it affected my enjoyment of Good Omens and decided to fight back with this; the show has made me very happy, but also, paradoxically, very anxious and I've put that decade-and-a-half long journey onto our darling Aziraphale, whom I find myself able to relate to a good deal in that struggle between duty and happiness. I am aware that these are two very different conditions that cause different issues to those suffering from them; I can't claim one is either more manageable, or worse than the other because that's insulting to both sides. 
> 
> This is dedicated to Perrine, who answered my questions about EDS, opened my eyes and is quite frankly awesome. Title inspiration taken from the song Crash Into Me (the Darren Criss and Steve Aoki's version if I'm being frank, but anything goes). 
> 
> So here we go. Unbeta'ed, so all mistakes are mine. Warnings for anxiety, obsessive-compulsive behaviour and mentioned secondary characters being blasé, careless and triggering about these conditions, plus some swearing.

* * *

Something isn’t right.

Crowley knows this, right down to his bones. Christmas is long since over, all the lights have long been taken down and all the festive cheer has disappeared, leaving the world dark and silent and on this brisk winter evening – or morning, if one is being technical, early and brand-new, like a shiny new day incoming – Crowley totters around the shop beneath his flat, yawning yet unable to sleep, misting the plants, clutching his cane, throwing out the odd threat here, straightening a label there. He’s no stranger to late nights, especially in this cold, which makes his leg feel like an icicle ready to snap off; there’s no roasts out there, no Father Christmas. Just a polite pork-chop and chips for tea, a snug, sleepy, dark night.

With that in mind, it’s the block of light, switching on and off across the road, that gets Crowley’s attention. It’s a small thing at first; most of the view from the window is somewhat flocked by a _very_ well-behaved plant display and it takes a few minutes to pull his attention from his work, a flicker on and off that bounces off his own window in a large square like a car-alarm. Ceasing his threats of a small cactus, he walks stiffly over to the window, peers out among the plants to fix his gaze on the bookshop across the street. The blinds are usually pulled down after a certain time every day – sometimes earlier, sometimes later, depending on the eccentric owner’s sensibilities, and Crowley should know. He knows better than anyone.

 _There –_ the light flicks on again, beneath the blinds, which are pulled up in the next second and Crowley sees him; white-blonde hair and a dressing-gown to match. The face – cherubic, eyes that always seem to see you, even from a mile away – doesn’t clock his witness, for the simple reason that Crowley hasn’t turned the main lights on. The glow from the streetlamp outside, and the slight fizz of the heater and the light flitting in from his quarters out back, casts a dim enough glow on the shop for him to make his way around.

He watches the figure extend an arm towards the windows, watches him make a pushing motion, one, two, three times. Ah. The blind is pulled down again, cutting out the light and Crowley holds his breath. Exhales it softly as the next blind is pulled up and the motion is repeated.

Biting his lip, he hobbles across to his till and reaches for the phone, dials the number he knows by heart.

‘H-hello?’ Oh, and if the lights going on and off repeatedly weren’t enough of a giveaway, this would be; this stammered distraction of a response, none of the usual trills of ‘A.Z. Fell and co!’ or ‘I’m afraid we’re quite _definitely_ closed.’

‘It’s me,’ Crowley makes a concentrated effort to keep his voice gentle; he’s not nice, he’s _never_ nice, but there’s no need to add to what’s clearly already a bad situation. ‘Aziraphale. I can see your lights on. Are you okay?’

‘Oh, everything’s fine!’ Aziraphale trills it too loudly and Crowley cringes, holding the receiver away from his ear. When he puts it back it’s to frankly absurd, over-the-top reassurances, ‘…late night stocks won’t do themselves, you know and a few of these books have been put, ah, rather out of order, found my Charles Dickens over by my Winston Grahams, could you credit it, although I thought, perhaps I should stay up and listen to some _Desert Island Discs_ while I work, on that iTunes thingy you showed me, anyway –’

‘Aziraphale,’ Crowley leans against the counter, rubs his forehead, feeling very tired just witnessing all of this from the side; silences his friend immediately. ‘Do you need me to come over?’

There’s a very telling silence, broken only by the rattle of the other man’s breathing.

‘You don’t,’ and just like that, that precious, chocolate-truffle voice, completely cracks; sounds completely broken, ‘you don’t have to – I’m sorry, Crowley, I’m so sorry.’ A tremble, a sob, shakes the line and Crowley finds himself gripping the phone. ‘I didn’t mean to disturb you.’

‘You haven’t,’ Crowley soothes, doing his best to sound neutral. ‘I wasn’t sleeping. Leg’s a bugger tonight.’ He pauses. ‘You want me to come over?’

The ensuing silence is not the same as a _no_ and Crowley can’t bring himself to interpret it as such.

‘I’ll be there in one minute. Breathe, okay? Just breathe for me, angel.’

*

A.Z. Fell and Co. is – apparently – a bookshop of long-standing, handed down from grandfather, to father, to son. In contrast, Crowley’s own shop was freshly opened, freshly his – new, by local standards and in some circles, is still considered such to this day – and he hadn’t been too preoccupied with the sight of the red-bricked, garish bookshop opposite when he had brought the empty shop to turn into a florist; he’d needed something to do, he had the money saved and he knew all about plants and how to shout at them, and at least with his leg, he could keep himself in one place. It kept him busy, kept him distracted, kept his mind off things and the pain of his joints that went pop. Shouting at plants to make them behave would, he had considered, be a brilliant stress-reliever.

It had been raining, the day they met. It had been raining and Crowley, dizzy and irritable from the long journey made more difficult by the wet weather and traffic jams on the roads, had been overdue a warm blanket and a blare-out or three or Queen; loved his Bentley, abhorred being stuck. He had been making the necessary transports of the last pieces of luggage from his old flat to the smaller one above the shop – one of the place’s selling-points – the delivery-men having obligingly moved in most of the stuff for him in consideration of the cane.

He had parked his beloved Bentley up outside, desperate to get away from the rain (loves the car, loves how it makes him feel like he’s wearing a second skin, loves how he can climb into the driver’s seat and simply be in control of a vehicle that actually works, as opposed his own treacherous flesh and blood and nerves – but has always hated being kept still and static in slow-loving traffic when all he wants to do is speed away merrily, savouring the taste of freedom). He had stumbled out, scowling at the weather which seemed made up of truly Biblical proportions and had stranded him on the M25 for much longer than necessary, with his box of CDs under one arm and keys jangling in his hand and the cane clutched in the other, the desire and determination to make one trip and one trip only borne of stubbornness.

Typically, the Universe didn’t agree with him; finding his feet after so long stuck in the car, he had completely wrongfooted himself and _slipped,_ his feet completely going out from under him, the rattle of CDs highlighting his humiliation as they hit the pavement along with him.

‘Oh, my goodness!’ A voice, posh and panicked, had made the exclamation somewhere on his left and he had looked up to see the frankly most strangely-dressed man he had clapped eyes on in his life, running towards him: blonde to truly platinum levels, the kind of white-blond you only saw in young children; a cardigan that seemed more silver than grey; and of all things, a bowtie clasped to his neck. A paper bag had been dangling from one hand as he flew to Crowley’s side, a large white umbrella shielding him from the rain and with the cardigan weaving out behind him like a superhero’s cape, he looked altogether rather comical.

‘Are you alright?’ the man asked, in a gentle voice that belied his panicked fluttering, his eyes falling on the scene, the CDs scattered around, the bleeding on his hands; he was going to have some massive bruises, he just knew it, ‘Oh, dear, erm. Here, let me…’

Crowley had been too sore to refuse the help – to snarl a refusal of some kind as was his wont, borne of experience of the determined kindness – and endless enquiries – of strangers whom he didn’t care for – and it helped that this man, besides his determination to dress as an exceedingly posh Blondie Brownie, hauled him to his feet as carefully as he could, murmuring reassurances all the while, before handing back his cane without comment. Crowley had smiled thinly, accepting it back and then remembering the CDs, just as the kind stranger did – he glanced down, made an exclamation, handed his umbrella off to Crowley and bolted to his knees to pluck them all up and placing them back into the fallen box.

‘No,’ Crowley found himself saying, leaning against the Bentley to try and anchor himself, ‘no, you don’t have to…’

‘Oh, it’s no trouble,’ the man beamed up at him; his trousers had made contact with the soggy ground and there were damp patches on the knees, which didn’t seem to faze him in the slightest. Instead, he plucked up the last two CDs, even bending his head to glance beneath the Bentley to see if any had scattered underneath. Crowley could only stare, only vaguely aware of the blood and gravel still in his palm, feeling both strangely towering, and rather embarrassed, finding himself glancing around for any onlookers. There had been no-one else, however; they were alone and had it not been for this man, he would have been soaked through – even more battered, even more bruised – trying to get up again. Thanks to this stranger, he simply felt a bit sore.

Satisfied, the man scooped the last of the CDs into the box, stopping to blink at the covers. ‘What’s a Velvet Underground?’ he had asked, so cluelessly that Crowley had momentarily forgotten his pain.

‘You wouldn’t like it,’ he’d said shortly, taking in, once again, the man’s waistcoat and bowtie; everything about him seemed to scream classical, or 1862.

‘Oh,’ the man had nodded seriously, regarding the CDs again. ‘Bebop.’

Crowley had sucked in an outraged breath – the kind that came before a torrenting wave of musical know-how – and had promptly spent the rest of that afternoon teaching Aziraphale – because that was his name, Aziraphale Fell, owner of the bookshop over the way – on the differences between bebop and decent music, such as, for example, the Velvet Underground. Aziraphale, in turn, had patched up his hand and gifted him with two very nice bottles of wine from his cellar – ‘You have a cellar?’ Crowley had marvelled – lamenting at Crowley’s shameless admission that he ‘didn’t read books’ and waxing lyrical about the beauty of Maya Angelou and PG Wodehouse.

Aziraphale never asked about the cane, or the leg; Crowley just assumed that Aziraphale was a decent guy who seemed happy and content with his lot and poured him another glass of wine. They’ve been friends ever since.

*

And yeah, Crowley was right. Aziraphale _is_ a decent guy and _seems_ happy and contented – at least, most of the time.

Crowley only discovered the truth two months later, when – woken up much earlier than he would have liked by an ache in his leg – he went to meet Aziraphale from church on Sunday morning to see if he could persuade him out to lunch, only to find his new friend sobbing uncontrollably and alone in the vestry outside while the rest of the flock sang hymns contentedly, stuck in the throes of an anxiety attack he quite clearly couldn’t shake.

Crowley had sat him down on the bench in the churchyard, and held his hand – dry and cracked, when he noticed how badly it was shaking and sat silently as Aziraphale had haltingly explained his truth and that he had been triggered the previous day by an unkind comment by one of his less-desired regulars, Gabriel, a then-newcomer to the area, who constantly insinuated that his particular brand of fundamental Christianity was superior to Aziraphale’s own; and that he had ended up trapping himself in his head, tying himself up with the meaning of that irritating American’s words (Crowley had hated Gabriel on sight. He had sauntered into the flower-shop a time or two and stood in the middle of the place, muscular and towering scrunching up his nose at the specimens on display and glancing quizzically at the tap-tap of Crowley’s cane against the floor, before giving him the card of some nerve specialist he apparently knew in the US who he thought ‘might help him.’ His presence in the area is only tolerated by the fact that he often flies back to the US for long periods and out of their hair).

‘I try,’ Aziraphale had sobbed, as Crowley listened – took off his sunglasses for once to show how much he was listening – ‘I try my hardest, Crowley, and I just – I want to do the right thing. But sometimes, I – I don’t know what that is. it seems so easy for everybody else. What if I do the wrong thing?’

‘You were the angel who ran through the rain to haul me into my shop, I don’t think you _can_ do the wrong thing,’ Crowley assured softly, unsure of what else to say. Aziraphale had smiled, and thanked him and Crowley had cheered him up with an anecdote of a recent visit of Gabriel’s to the shop, when the American git had had the nerve to put his finger brazenly into one of the open claws of a Venus Flytrap and then complain about getting bitten.

‘They don’t even _bite_ properly!’ he had exclaimed as Aziraphale had giggled on the bench, his beaming face covered with drying tears. ‘I’m telling you, angel, if I ever get a service-dog, I’m gonna purposely train it to bite him on the ankle. Won’t be able to do anything about it, because it’ll be a service-dog, and I’m _disabled_ and _need_ it.’ He put on an exaggerated pout, gesturing to his leg and taken Aziraphale’s gentle, lingering smile as a kind of reward.

Of course, that hadn’t been the end of it. They had gone out to lunch for food and company and distraction, but that most definitely _hadn’t_ been the end of it. In time, Crowley had learnt to recognise the signs; the distractedness of the bad kind that wasn’t Aziraphale enjoying the reading space of his shop and simply being too embroiled in a novel to return his calls – but the kind that left him far too quiet, trapped in a ribbon of rumination within his own head that left his blue eyes vacant and dull, bags growing beneath them from the sheer force of the thoughts roaming inside his head; hands shaking, the sudden need to dash to the bathroom.

He also learned in time that on the day they met, Aziraphale had left his shop for a stroll in a bid to outrun the doubtful anxieties crawling at his head; meeting Crowley, helping Crowley, had been the sought-for distraction that had knocked the particular ruminations he had been suffering that day on the head.

Nice to be useful, Crowley had thought, when Aziraphale had tipsily, guiltily admitted that one night, staring hard into his wine, as though it were something, somehow to be ashamed of. Nice that his treacherous body provided escape for someone else’s hard-going brain.

(He’d fall over again in a second, if that’s what it takes).

*

The world gazes lazily down upon him as he heads over the road, wandering vaguely just what he and Aziraphale are doing out of bed and deciding it doesn’t really matter either way. Crowley doesn’t mind; he actually prefers it this way, limping stiffly over to Aziraphale’s without prying eyes upon him. Besides, in different circumstances, Aziraphale unhappy would probably be enough to send him hurtling across the road like a tit, as if the bookshop were on fire. The cane gives him one advantage in that respect; draws him back, stops him making a complete fool of himself in that regard.

(He _likes_ Aziraphale, okay? Likes his fussiness and his posh attitude and his love for sushi and how he can go on and on about one book for hours without getting bored and how he always shares those really posh eclairs he gets at Waitrose, _let me tempt you, dear boy._ Crowley doesn’t eat much – he doesn’t get hungry. But he’s eaten a little more than usual, under the care of Aziraphale’s friendship).

When he draws level with the bookshop, he can see that the lights at the back are on, even though the front is set in shadow and he knocks on the door.

‘Angel? Aziraphale?’ he calls through the keyhole; hesitates, tries the knob. It swings open slightly and he frowns, pushes it further. ‘I’m coming in.’

He wonders if this is the moment in a horror-film – or ITV crime-drama – when the audience would be hollering, ‘No, you idiot, don’t go in there!’ and his breath hitches for a moment at the sheer, seeming _silence_ of the place – before he looks towards the light at the back and sees his best friend, curled up against the bookshelf with his head in his hands, his bright, beautiful face completely crumpled with tears, chest and shoulders falling in silent sobs.

He only just glances up at Crowley wades his way over to him; the keys to the shop door are on the floor beside him, as though they’ve haphazardly been thrown aside. Looking around, Crowley can sense, bit by bit, a sort of subtle disarray; two of the blinds are down, but one of them is up, Aziraphale’s chair has been moved out from its desk as though he’s pushed himself out violently, several open books sit around, careless and forgotten, and Aziraphale himself is a complete state. He’s clad in the old tartan pyjamas that match his favourite bowtie, his dressing-gown slung on haphazardly; one of his favourite purple slippers has been kicked off his left foot, leaving it bare. His hair is in disarray; Crowley winces, lets out a silent, sympathetic hiss. He knows Aziraphale tends to run his hands repeatedly through his hair when he’s stressed or upset – leaving it dry and crumpled; this, more than anything, is a warning sign.

‘Angel,’ Crowley stops beside him and using his cane as leverage, kneels down awkwardly beside him. ‘Hello,’ he says gently, in the same tone he usually reserves for kittens and puppies and small children. When nobody else is looking, of course. Save perhaps the man in front of him.

‘I’m sorry,’ Aziraphale whimpers, hiding his face in his hand, his shoulders trembling; the shame comes off him in waves and it’s truly upsetting to watch. ‘I’m so, so sorry, Crowley.’

‘For what?’ Crowley holds his gaze gently. ‘Having a bad night? That’s alright,’ he puts a gentle chuff into his voice, gives him a small smile. ‘You can’t help it.’

‘I – I need to know better,’ Aziraphale’s voice sounds like it wants to wail, but is too cracked and tired; he looks absolutely exhausted. ‘I should – I should _do_ better. I’ve had this for years.’

Crowley shakes his head. Aziraphale, he learned over a series of nights of getting thoroughly sloshed, was diagnosed with OCD in his late teens, but not before getting to the point of being unable to enter a church out of sheer, scrupulosity-intensified guilt. Therapy had helped with most of it, but the responsibilities of running the shop – and local church-going gits who shall remain nameless – don’t help.

‘Angel, it wouldn’t matter if you’d had it for five years or fifty,’ he tells him, lowering himself to sit properly, with his legs spread out and his back set carefully against the bookshelf.

‘Oh, don’t sit down, you might give yourself a bruise,’ Aziraphale starts, looking distressed, but Crowley ignores him and not so much wriggles, but slithers down the wall to rest properly beside him. Some people are worth bruising for.

‘Look, angel,’ he continues smoothly, and he hopes kindly, as if he wasn’t interrupted at all, ‘Relapses, they’re going to happen. It’s just part and parcel of it, I’m afraid.’ He pats his own leg with a vague smile. ‘Are you telling me I shouldn’t be limping anymore just because I’ve known about my EDS for years?’

Aziraphale gasps, eyes comically wide around the trail of his tears, a momentarily distraction. ‘Absolutely not.’ Crowley just folds his arms and looks at him, faux-sternly and stubborn and Aziraphale mutters, looking completely defeated. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Why do you keep apologising?’ Crowley scowls. ‘You haven’t done anything wrong.’ It bothers him, more than it should, when Aziraphale thinks he’s done something wrong. He’s a man fully preoccupied with ‘doing the right thing’ and yet, he’s Aziraphale. He’s a Christian who loves to eat despite the laws on gluttony, for example and can’t see Lent through for more than a day; who can eat four boxes of Waitrose eclairs in a single weekend (even if he shares one or two with Crowley); he gets exceedingly cross and has an incredible wrath. He falls between the gaps, in Crowley’s opinion; a moral man who believes in a loving God, but not necessarily in everything the church tells him.

Which can leave him confused; overwhelmed; wondering if he’s good enough, or if he needs to do better; mentally straining himself to ‘check’ whether or not he can, feeling trapped, feeling anxious, feeling scared and simply falling down in sheer exhaustion. Someone like Gabriel – who always seems so put-together, so contented and so sure of himself, and who is fully aware of it and doesn’t waste time pointing out to Aziraphale all the things he thinks he’s doing wrong – _never_ helps.

‘So,’ he says finally, when nothing else seems forthcoming from his friend. ‘Talk me through it. Come on,’ he murmurs, softening his voice in a manner meant to sound cajoling, but could easily be described as tempting. ‘Tell your Uncle Crowley.’

Something about that seems to startle Aziraphale, jerk him out of whatever reverie he’s fallen into. He’s twisting his handkerchief around his fingers; Crowley shrugs and puts his head back against the shelf and waits. He’s got all night.

‘I…’ Aziraphale stammers finally; the movement seems to be enough to break him and he seems to wipe his eyes determinedly. ‘Did you hear about the – the robberies at Christmas? The – the shops that were turned over, i-in Oxford?’

Crowley clucks his tongue; takes another look at the haphazardly organised blinds, the door. He thinks he can see where this is going. ‘I did,’ he says, playing along.

‘They were never caught.’ Aziraphale wobbles to his feet; Crowley makes to follow but is stayed by a hand. ‘No, it’s alright, I’ll, er – ’ He reaches with trembling hands for a newspaper on the table – an old one, a few weeks old and the date marks it at the beginning of December; brings it back to their little corner.

‘They smashed the windows.’ He shows Crowley the article covering the robberies, the accompanying photos of the crime-scenes. ‘And one of them was an independent business like mine and they – they think they might have used an axe – or axes, in the plural – and they were never caught.’

He paces, up and down, looking frantic and frightened. ‘And I – I’m scared they’ll come for me, next. They can’t be far away, can they?’ He shakes his head down at his hands; he’s been picking at his usually immaculate nails, still has his little ring on.

‘I know that I’ve locked the door, Crowley,’ he says finally, closing his eyes in pain. ‘I know I’ve locked it, and put the keys away and checked it, and double-checked, and closed and locked all the windows, and tried each one to make sure they’re secure. I _know_ I have. But then I’m lying in bed upstairs, and it’s just…’

‘Brain didn’t get the memo,’ Crowley fills in the final piece of the puzzle, sympathetic; Aziraphale squeezes his eyes shut. ‘When did it kick off?’

‘About ten o’clock,’ Aziraphale whispers. ‘I wanted to go to sleep so badly and I just – I couldn’t. I tried, I really tried.’

‘Ten o’clock – angel!’ Crowley exclaims. ‘That was _hours_ ago, you must be exhausted. Why didn’t you call me?’

Aziraphale mutters something at his knees that sounds remarkably like, ‘Didn’t want to bother you…’ and Crowley sighs, trying not to feel, frankly, a little insulted and failing on all fronts.

Here’s the thing: he _knows_ Aziraphale and he _knows_ how well Aziraphale gets on with people and he _also_ knows how much Aziraphale savours his space. Crowley slips in during the in-between days, but Aziraphale is the kind of man who carves out his own happiness; who can’t bear the prospect of too many people, too much of the outside world, digging into him in the form of noisy human-beings. He’s not one to rely on other people for company and entertainment – frankly, neither is Crowley and he finds the very thought of it needy and unbearable. It’s one of the reasons they get on so well; they know when to give each other space, just as much as they both know how it feels to be forgotten, leaving them to make their own way through the world and work on making themselves happy.

But there’s the determination to deal with things on your own – yeah, okay, Crowley gets that – and the stubborn insistence upon suffering in silence all night when you could call someone to come sit with you and help you ride it out. How long have they been friends? Granted, it’s not the longest time in the world, but sometimes it feels less like six years and more like sixteen; sixty; six-hundred; six-thousand years; Aziraphale has slotted into his life like something unexpectedly wonderful, like he’s always been there, waving out the shadowy faces of those Crowley used to hang out with, whom he learned the hard way would kick his cane right out from under his hands – or his rump, if he happened to be sitting on it – and then he wouldn’t see them for dust. Even during long periods of separation – because one of them went travelling, or went away for work, or prolonged hospital stays – they were never too far away from each other.

And maybe, when Crowley’s calmed down a bit, he’ll see the logic in that – in fact, he can see it now. But, it still makes him grouchy.

‘Look, angel.’ He sighs, places his hand atop Aziraphale’s. ‘I can’t promise you nobody’s going to rob your shop.’ And he _can’t,_ because offering Aziraphale reassurance is about as productive as someone taking his cane away and expecting him to walk without it, unaided, ‘That’s something no-one can tell you. No-one can predict something like that. Even if you _did_ lock all the doors and windows, if they _did_ have an axe…’ It sounds harsh, he knows, and a small part of him feels horrible for saying it, but he knows from the resignation flitting over Aziraphale’s face that it’s doing the trick; shifting the perspective, the wheel inside Aziraphale’s brain that’s got itself firmly stuck slowly, _slowly_ starting to turn.

‘They could just as easily come into my shop,’ he adds then, with a shrug. ‘Smash my door in, take my plants, take all the money in the safe. Wake me up, and –’

‘Stop it, Crowley,’ Aziraphale exclaims, sounding horrified and Crowley manages to maintain a poker-face, disguising how he feels about the fact that Aziraphale appears resigned to the possibility of harm towards himself and his place, but horrified at the purely theoretical prospect of the same on Crowley. It’s the odd brand of caring that an OCD sufferer will give their loved ones; the kindness and morality that makes their brains such a bitch to live with.

Feeling like a loved one to Aziraphale feels odd, actually. Well, Crowley supposes neither of them really _have_ anybody else. But still. Such protectiveness sends _something_ up his spine; something warm, and trickling and lingering. Something sweet.

He gives Aziraphale a moment to breathe; wonders if the gears in his brainbox have shifted _just_ enough to try something else.

‘We should probably move you, I think,’ he says gently. ‘You can stay at my place tonight, if you like.’

Aziraphale blinks at him, something like panic returning to his features at the prospect of leaving his beloved shop alone and empty in the middle of the night – no matter how empty and quiet the street outside is. Right now, though, the shop is both Aziraphale’s most beloved prize and his worst enemy; the very cruelties of his thoughts are floating between the shadows of the shelves tonight, as though all the book pages are floating around them with the same fears that besiege Aziraphale on a bad day, falling down upon him like foregone prophecies and leaving him racing from them.

Crowley watches him thinking, visibly afraid; and then something in his face settles, like resignation; the realisation that the only way to get out of this mental hole is to get out of _here_ and brave what’s to come.

‘I’d like that,’ he murmurs; wipes at his face with a hand, takes a visibly steadying breath. Catches Crowley looking, smiles brightly with the kind of smile used to mask hurt and wobbles to his feet, using the bookshelves and stair banisters that lead to the top floor as leverage. Crowley doesn’t _really_ need help to get up, but he lets Aziraphale give it anyway, as a kind of focus-point and distraction; lets his friend reach down with both arms for him to hold, so he can tug him gently upright.

That’s Aziraphale for you, though. He’s always been helping Crowley get back on his feet.

He puts his favourite cardigan on and hurries outside with him; locks the door once, tries it and then steps back, breathing hard, before making himself turn away and following Crowley into his own flat across the road, his frightened breath a fog in the dark.

It’s a mutual decision not to drink alcohol, not yet – it’s a tough call to make, but neither of them want to rely on alcohol when one or the other is feeling nervous, both try and try hard to avoid it as a crutch in times such as these. They have tea instead; Aziraphale makes it with still-shaking hands, waves off Crowley’s attempts to try and help – and he’s going to have words with him about that at some point; yes, he’s got chronic pain, but he runs a florist, he can make his own fucking tea – and they sprawl on Crowley’s sofa, in front of the telly and Crowley props his leg up on the coffee-table, takes a long swig of tea with a relieved sigh, grabs the remote, flits through the channels until they arrive on _The Vicar of Dibley_ replaying on Gold – yeah, that’ll do. This show always helps Aziraphale feel better – on an emotional level as well as a spiritual one, much like Queen and speeding along in his car is the perfect distraction for Crowley, and before long, he’s curled up with his soft blonde hair in Crowley’s lap, eyes fixed on the television.

_‘And lo! An angel of the Lord appeared before them!’_

_‘Be not afraid –’_

_‘No. **Be** afraid! Be **very** afraid!’_

Aziraphale giggles at the screen and Crowley smirks. His feelings about the church are complicated – and don’t always help Aziraphale, when he’s having a particularly bad episode of scrupulosity, say – but it’s good to know at least some of them have a sense of humour. And that Dawn French, what a riot.

Aziraphale stretches out a little bit, uncurling himself from where he had been lying in an almost foetal position and eases out onto his back, crosses his hands over his chest, visibly relaxed, but also mulling things over.

‘Gabriel swung by earlier today,’ he says, finally, sadly; resignedly; Crowley turns the television down and glances down at him. ‘Had another book for me to restore. He...’ He taps his thumbs together, looking thoughtful; Crowley lets a finger run lightly over his fringe, smiles a little despite himself as Aziraphale raises his head a little to it. With his skin like white chocolate, and his eyes like deep blue marbles, and his soft smile, Aziraphale is just a gorgeous sight to behold. His kind heart – tempered with the fact that he’s _just_ enough of a bastard to occasionally, _accidentally_ put soya milk in Gabriel’s tea at church elevenses – makes him even better to know.

‘Tell me,’ Crowley coaxes; is rocked by a slight sigh.

‘He…insinuated that I should hit the gym for my New Year’s resolution,’ Aziraphale huffs and Crowley hisses, just a little. ‘That I had clearly had too much Yule Log over Christmas – I mean, yes, alright, I did, I’ll put my hands up to it – and what would I do if anyone attempted to shoplift and hadn’t I been reading the news recently? He then conjured a very _amusing_ scene of me gasping for breath just three steps outside my shop and said I should come jogging with him before church tomorrow.’

His voice rises in obvious, tilted upset and truly? If Crowley weren’t so comfortable and if he knew it wouldn’t upset Aziraphale so to have provided the very motive for murder – and if getting up from this sofa to throw himself to his feet and march over to Gabriel’s posh apartment and slam his door down didn’t mean shoving Aziraphale’s poor, anxiety-sore head off his lap – then his best friend wouldn’t see him for dust. Never mind that Crowley needs a cane and Gabriel is stunning and muscular and well-built and a complete twat. He won’t stand a chance for making one comment and then leaving Aziraphale alone and triggered like that.

_Let’s see what happens when I bring my cane down on **your** head, you fucking twat. _

‘I’m used to the digs about my weight,’ Aziraphale huffs sadly and Crowley, who brought that bloody Yule Log for Aziraphale to enjoy in the first place, grits his teeth. ‘But when Gabriel is warning you about something – it was the first part that frightened me and I couldn’t get it out of my head.’ He sighs, nestles his cheek into Crowley’s denim-clad thigh. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Uh-uh, sh, sh, sh,’ Crowley cautions. ‘None of that. It’s not your fault.’ He strokes Aziraphale’s hair absent-mindedly for a moment – yes, it’s dry, but on a good day, it’s usually fluffy and incredibly soft, like the scrambled eggs Aziraphale makes him for breakfast, or a cloud with a really good haircare routine and he’s often wondered if Aziraphale actually minds, but he’s never seemed to protest; always nuzzles into it a little, in fact, as though he’s somehow starved for touch; for affection.

And maybe he is; maybe they both are, in fact and more often than they’d like to admit. There have been nights when they’ve cuddled in front of the television for company, or Aziraphale has rested his head on his shoulder, or Crowley has sprawled against him while he’s been reading. It’s been happening more and more recently; maybe borne out of a desire to shove two fingers up to Gabriel The Wanker’s ideology that men should only show affection by soundly punching each other on the arm, but perhaps more to do with the idea that they _like_ each other, a lot and two strangers on a pavement on a rainy day became… something else. A phone-call on a drizzly afternoon, theatre trips and cinema days and lazy days when the bookshop feels like a second home.

It’s the closest thing to safe that Crowley’s felt in years; in his entire life, even.

Aziraphale smiles up at him, at Crowley leaning over his form, protective and they just stay, and sit, in that kind of shared silence that Crowley never thought he’d ever be able to share with anybody, at all; never occurred to him that he might, ever. But there’s him, there’s here, there’s places he never thought he’d be permitted to go – never dreamed that one day, the stranger who helped him up from the rainy pavement would be someone whose shop he could saunter into on a whim.

Slowly, Aziraphale’s hand slips up the sofa and settles his palm on the short bristles on the back of Crowley’s head. He only recently cut the long hair look – literally, as much as physically – and let the barber shore off his shoulder-length locks, going for a full fringe and a short back just to feel a little bit more grown-up and Aziraphale can’t seem to stop staring at it. He’s never stared at the cane, but he stares at Crowley’s hair. And touches it, ostensibly because it calms him, provides sensory solace. Crowley closes his eyes briefly at the physical contact, not so rare these days, but so wonderfully unique for the fact that it’s Aziraphale, and it’s him and they’ve both always been a bit different compared to everyone else around here.

Aziraphale let his fingers move slowly; the fulsome base of his thumb brushes his cheek and Crowley barely manages to hold in another, softer hiss. Instead, he blindly places a hand over Aziraphale’s and holds on, wonders just how this man – worrisome, and fretful, and irritating, and lovely – could ever think of himself so meanly (and that’s a sign of how long he and Aziraphale have been hanging around each other, because that’s _exactly_ the kind of phase you’d hear in one of Jane Austen’s novels).

‘Think you’ll go to church in the morning?’ he asks softly, without letting go of the hand; it’s Saturday night, after all. Aziraphale’s finger crooks slightly; he bites his lip.

‘Not sure.’ He sighs, drops his hand to cross his fingers back together. Crowley runs his palm back over his curls and smiles in what he hopes is a soothing fashion. Gabriel is often at the church, loud-mouthed and heavy-lunged, a faithful servant of God and a rather annoying one to boot and his presence has been a source of contention for Aziraphale and a few of the other regulars too, which goes some way to alleviating his angel’s own guilt. There’s a little bit of reassurance in there, but perhaps he’s entitled.

‘See how you feel,’ he comforts. ‘You’re allowed to call in sick every now and then.’

Crowley’s own perception of the Almighty is complicated at best; for Aziraphale, his faith is an unshakeable base on which many different worries occur, shaking him to the bone, both his greatest comfort and one of his worst triggers – and yet he still perseveres. It’s something to be admired, especially by somebody who could never seem to settle into church-life.

But then, would Aziraphale be Aziraphale without his belief that everything is ineffable; the eagerness of his heart and soul; the brain that leaves him reading erotica at the back of the shop quite comfortably without a trace of guilt with the intimate knowledge of the sexuality of all God’s creatures (Crowley knows those books exist, they’re _very_ badly-hidden and really, way to go Aziraphale, he’s learned a lot from sneaky peeks through those volumes when Aziraphale’s had his back turned) and yet causes him to check and double-check light switches and gas-hobs and whether or not a particular thought that crossed his mind just then makes him a bad person.

Aziraphale smiles, but he doesn’t comment – nor do either of them comment on the way their hands join, and twine together like two threads of yarn, keeping each other company in the middle of the night.

When they wake up a few hours later, sprawled together on the sofa and Crowley sore and joints popping – but using Aziraphale’s lovely belly as a pillow – and wind up walking to church side-by-side, arm-in-arm – neither of them comment on _that,_ either.

*

About a year or so later, on a particularly freezing January morning – sodding climate change having moved all the bitter cold and dumped it at the latter end of the least appealing month of the year – Crowley and Aziraphale lie in bed together above the bookshop. Or rather, roll is a better use of the word. Aziraphale is wearing the brand-new tartan pyjamas Crowley got him for Christmas, freshly washed but by no means starched and soft enough to Crowley to nibble with his teeth, much to his angel’s squealed protests.

‘Don’t, you terrible fiend!’ Aziraphale chides, smiling at the grinning bite of teeth, shaking the material and Crowley chuckles and reaches up to cradle his face for a kiss. He loves this – loves that he can be so playful with Aziraphale, so naked and the safest here than he’s ever felt anywhere else in the world. His cane is propped up against his side of the bed – his side, he has a side now in Aziraphale’s bed along with a framed photograph of them both, taken at the Hay Festival (Crowley loves old-fashioned framed photographs, so sue him) on the bedside table, his glasses, his phone and all his keys on a ring, loads of keys, both for his place and here. On Aziraphale’s side is another photograph; the two of them posing with Newt, Crowley’s assistant, and his girlfriend Anathema, a sleep-mask and a beautiful potted plant, courtesy of his love.

‘Any chance I could tempt you to be late for church?’ Crowley chuffs mischievously into Aziraphale’s mouth while playfully tugging at the buttons of the PJs. Aziraphale had exclaimed with delight when he had unwrapped them on Christmas morning, planted a long, lingering kiss on Crowley’s lips and treated him to the sight of trying them on, right then and there. He wears them meticulously and never gets them dirty. Crowley loves seeing him so happy in them – had to eventually practically manhandle Aziraphale into opening all of his other presents because he was so charmed with this one – loves helping him out of them like the good, obliging boyfriend he is, making him giggle and squirm. Loves Aziraphale’s lips on his mouth, on his skin, his gentle, adoring hands running over his bastard traitorous leg, his bruises with nothing less than dotage. Aziraphale is a good man, and he’s Crowley’s man.

‘Oh, _really,’_ Aziraphale huffs, but it’s certainly no protest; instead, he wraps an arm around him and kisses him all the same. Crowley curls up beside him, arm folded across his chest, spends several happy minutes just kissing, and kissing as the church-bells ring in the distance, a happy harmony on a freezing cold morning as two men desperately in love huddle together and warm each other up.

*

**Author's Note:**

> _The Vicar of Dibley _is a charming, hilarious religious sitcom starring Dawn French that aired from 1994 to 2006 (give or take the additional special or two) and is an excellent spiritual balm for those who, like Aziraphale, are having a bad day (or night).__


End file.
